


follow me down

by dreamdiary



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dreams, Dreams and Nightmares, Dreamscapes, Eventual Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Gen, Horror, Lucid Dreaming, Mystery, Mythology - Freeform, Psychological Horror, Small Towns, Supernatural Elements, Suspense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26198947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamdiary/pseuds/dreamdiary
Summary: Four years after her brother’s disappearance, Katara returns home.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 52





	1. (when you wake) you’re still in a dream

_I woke up last night and I saw you standing out in the moonlight, tying a noose with a vine_

_I said, mostly to myself, “is that thing for you, or is it mine?”_

_\- Wild Fires_ , Bambara 

* * *

Katara’s hometown is always rainy this time of year, and the graying skies do nothing to help her growing headache. She steps out of the cab, paying the driver and closing the door behind her before he all but speeds away. Doesn’t want to get caught in traffic, she guesses. She has half a mind to run after the cab and ask to go back, where she can live in the city for the rest of her life, watch the glowing red and blue and green lights and listen to the noise of millions of people around her and go out every night in shiny new clothes with shiny new friends and forget, forget that she left her brother behind, forget that she hears him in her dreams every night...

But Katara has never been that kind of person. She came back for a reason.

Katara finally takes in her surroundings. The small, rickety houses with caved in porches, the cracks in the pavement, the hot, heavy late afternoon air, the melancholy that permeates it all. She hears a crack of thunder, and waits for a release—but no rain follows. The air is stretched as tautly as Katara’s nerves.

She turns to the house she grew up in. Her father had tried to take the day off from work to welcome her in, but Katara’d insisted she was fine. Now she wishes there was a familiar face to greet her at the door, because all she has now are ghosts.

Katara fishes her keys out of her pocket and walks up the driveway, noticing the overgrown weeds and making a mental reminder to fix up the garden later. Might as well, while she’s here. The porch steps creak slightly when she walks up them, but when she unlocks the front door it swings open smoothly.  _That’s new,_ she thinks.  _I remember that was always creaking when we opened it, no matter how much we oiled the hinges..._ Katara’s thoughts fade away as she spots the inside of the house for the first time in four years. Her dad redecorated. Gone is the lumpy couch, the paint-chipped shelves, the squeaky chairs. The only bits of familiarity are Gran-Gran’s traditional carvings on the mantle—ivory and soapstone sculptures of tiger seals, buffalo yaks, and otter penguins. The change is not unwelcome, though, and Katara breathes a sigh of relief as she walks up the stairs that still groan under her weight. Maybe it will be easier to stay here now that everything looks different. Well. Almost everything. 

When she reaches the top of the staircase, she takes a long look at Sokka’s old bedroom. The gray door, closed. Maybe later she’ll open it, but for now she turns away to her own bedroom. Opening her door, still bright blue with crudely-painted whales and seashells she did when she was seven years old, Katara finds her room the exact same. There is the light blue wallpaper, peeling at the corners. There are the high school swim trophies on her bookshelf. There are the photos of her friends on the walls, taken before Sokka disappeared. There is the fluffy pink rug, the nightstand, the bed.

The bed. 

Katara remembers the last time she saw her brother.

_“Katara! psst... Katara! Wake up!”_

_ It was probably around four am and all Katara wanted to do was go back to sleep, but her dreams lately were filled with blood and bones and the ocean washing up dead bodies on the shore, crashing again and again and again, and trying and failing to outrun something huge, something monstrous. She groaned and opened her eyes. “What, Sokka, what is it?” Her brother was standing next to her bed, eyes bright and wide. _

_“I found something. In the woods, by the river. I think you should see it.”_

_“Sokka, what? It’s so early, and I have school today, and you have work... what did you find, exactly?”_

_He shook his head. “Not here. Come on, Katara, I’ll show you. It’ll be fun.” She saw a gleam of desperation in his eyes. There was something off about him. His eyes were far, far too bright._

_“Sokka... I can’t. You know I can’t. Please stay here, Sokka, just go back to sleep.” It’s dangerous, she didn't say. I can’t explain it but I’ve been having weird dreams again and you shouldn’t go in the woods tonight. Just go back to your room, Sokka, please, and in the morning I can drag you awake and I can make breakfast for us and you can drive me to school and blast your shitty rap and I won’t even complain. Just don’t go in the woods._

_But Sokka had always loved mysteries, and he’d always been too practical-minded to care about her dreams._

_Sokka shook his head again. “I’m going, Katara. I have to. I’ll be back by eight, I promise. But if I’m not... just cover for me, okay? Tell Gran-Gran Zuko gave me a ride.” He tried to smile but it ended up looking more like a grimace, his mouth twisting like he'd just tasted something sour._

_Katara got that feeling from her dream again, of trying to outrun something, of the waves crashing around her ears._

_“Sure,” she said. Don’t go don’t go don’t go pulsed in the back of her mind, but she was suddenly overcome with a wave of exhaustion._

_Sokka nodded with a grim finality and turned to leave her room. Through her tired haze, Katara heard him say “I love you, Katara" in an uncharacteristically soft tone. "You too, Sokka,” she mumbled in response. Apprehension washed over her again and she wanted to drag her brother back to his room before it was too late, but something in her limbs kept her down. She was asleep before her head hit the pillow._

_After that, Katara didn't dream._

Sokka never comes back.


	2. house full of time

_Every door contains a dream and a nightmare_

_Nothing is ever really pure in the stale air_

_\- Lovelife,_ Lush

* * *

The sound of the front door opening breaks Katara out of her reverie. She startles and then runs out of her room, bounding down the staircase. Her father is standing by the door in his work uniform, surrounded by the faint smell of diesel and sweat and something unmistakably him. His face lights up when he sees her, and Katara rushes forward to greet him with a crushing hug.

Katara is home.

Dinner is hearty five-flavor soup that her father makes that is, surprisingly, delicious. He's gotten better over the years. Hakoda asks her what she's been up to since her graduation a few months ago. She tells him about the new aquatic conservation groups she's been involved with over the summer. He doesn't ask why she didn't visit once while she was at Omashu University, and she doesn't ask why he abandoned his children after their mother died. Katara pretends not to notice the new wrinkles carving his face or the heaviness on his shoulders, and Hakoda pretends not to notice the bags under her eyes or her shaking hands.

They both do a lot of pretending. 

After cleaning up the kitchen, Katara bids her father goodnight and ascends the stairs. Instead of washing up and going straight to bed, though, she stops in front of her brother's bedroom. The gray door looms in front of her. It's time to pick up where she left off.

Swallowing her nerves, Katara pushes the door open and immediately sneezes as dust enters her nose. Does her dad not even go in his room to clean? She toes the door open a little wider and sees a room that hasn't been entered in a long time, a fine layer of dust covering Sokka's duvet, his possessions untouched, the air dry and stale. Katara feels a dull ache in her chest. This is not the room of someone who is alive or dead. This is the room of someone who has been forgotten. 

Outside, the rain starts pouring down, thrumming on the window.

Katara makes her way toward the closet, half-remembering something she needs to look for. A notebook. A memory...

_Katara and Zuko sat in a booth at the Jasmine Dragon. Zuko was still wearing his apron, not having bothered to take it off before going on his break. Their tea sat in front of them, untouched. It had been almost two weeks since Sokka disappeared, and no clues had turned up to his possible whereabouts. No sightings. No notes. He hadn't taken his car or his phone or his wallet. No signs of struggle. Most disturbing was the fact that even the shirshu hadn't picked up any traces of him. Nothing. Like he had simply ceased to exist._

_Katara stared into her cup, idly swirling the tea around with her spoon. Then she cleared her throat and looked up. "Zuko," she began. "Did Sokka seem... weird to you? When you last saw him?"_

_Zuko sighed and closed his eyes, thinking._

_"I mean, not really..." His eyes shot open. "_ _Wait._ _There was this one thing. I can't believe I forgot. After work that last day I saw him standing out by the dumpster, scribbling in this notebook and mumbling to himself. And it was hardcore scribbling, all these diagrams and equations and sketches." Zuko paused and took a sip of his tea. After swallowing, he continued. "I assumed it was another project of his so I didn't say anything. But when he noticed me he snapped the notebook shut and tried to hide it. Which was kind of weird to me. Sokka'd never passed up the chance to talk about his projects before."_

_Katara's eyes widened. "And he... I mean, he didn't say anything about the woods?"_

_"The woods? No. Why would he?"_

_"No, no reason..." Katara tried to backtrack. "It's nothing."_

_"Katara." Zuko tilted his head, eyes searching. "What's so important about the woods?"_

Katara moves around Sokka's room, rifling through the drawers, searching the shelves, rummaging in the closet. She finds math and science and kuai ball trophies. An ice marble set. His first boomerang. Old star charts and a pair of broken binoculars. A digital camera that she doesn't have the heart to go through. Katara pulls out sets of notebooks, but all of them are either school-related or projects he'd shown her long ago. Nothing new. She doesn't know what she expected—she and her friends had already scoured his room for clues, years ago. And he'd probably had the notebook with him anyway. But she'd still had hope. 

After a few more hours of searching Sokka's room proves fruitless, Katara sighs and stands up, brushing off her knees.

Maybe her dreams will have answers. 

—

Katara opens her eyes to find herself in a field stretching for miles and miles around. The yellow grass is brittle beneath her bare feet, and the dry, heavy air makes it hard to breathe. Above her, gray clouds dot the dull, rust-colored sky. It is eerily silent. Katara can see dark, amorphous blobs swirling in the corners of her vision, but when she turns her head to get a closer look, they are gone. She holds her breath in anticipation. Soon she'll hear—

"Katara! Katara!" 

The voice is unmistakably her brother's, seemingly coming from all directions. "Sokka!" Katara cries out. "Sokka, I'm right here!" She starts sprinting, heart pounding in her ears, hair flying behind her. "Katara!" she hears again, and she picks up her pace. "Sokka, I'm coming!" Katara calls out, but he gives no indication he has heard her. He never does, in her dreams. Katara is breathing hard now, her lungs burning, but for the first time, she can see the silhouette of a person in the distance, dark against the drab sky. It's him, it must be. Katara wants to cry in relief but she doesn't have time for that now, not when she's so close. Just a little farther. Around her, Katara can see the air shimmering, the sky turning into a dark, blood red, the grass shriveling up and turning to dust that sticks to the soles of her feet, the dark blobs growing and mutating. But she doesn't care. Her brother. For the first time in four years, she can see her brother.

The figure has their back to her, but now that she's closer she can see it's him. "Sokka!" Katara cries again, but he doesn't turn around and the air grows thicker and heavier until Katara can barely run, her limbs so heavy it's like trying to move through gelatin. When she tries to call his name no sound comes out, and with growing horror she can see Sokka is surrounded by the dark blobs, being consumed by the writhing mass of darkness, and Katara tries to reach out for him but she can barely lift her arms, and she tries to scream but her voice still doesn't work, and suddenly the ground drops out from beneath her and she gets a sinking feeling in her stomach and she is falling, falling, falling—

—

Katara wakes up.

The events of her dream come rushing back to her, and she chokes back a sob. That was the closest in four years she'd gotten to seeing Sokka, and she'd failed. Katara doesn't know why he had suddenly shown up in her dreams a month ago, his shouts echoing across whichever desolated landscape she turned up in when she closed her eyes, but she knows there has to be an important reason behind it. She doesn't dream things for no reason. Gran-Gran had always stressed the importance of dreams. Katara can _always_ trust her dreams.

They've never been wrong, not once.

_Katara awoke with a cry. She was eight years old, and she'd just had a nightmare of her mother lying dead on the pavement, blood pooled beneath her head, limbs twisted at unnatural angles. Of her mother's body flying through the air, hitting the ground with a sickening crunch._

_She ran to her Gran-Gran's room, sobbing. It had seemed so real, and her parents were out that night, and what if they didn't come home, what if something had happened to mom, what if, what if, what if. Katara couldn't stop crying. She was dimly aware of her Gran-Gran hugging her tight, stroking her hair, trying to soothe her, but Katara felt numb. Somewhere deep inside her, she knew she was right._

_Thirty minutes later, they got the call. Hit-and-run, they said. Dead on impact._

_In one night, everything changed._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are appreciated! i'll probably be updating this every sunday.


	3. in between and after

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys! sorry this chapter is so late, i just started college and it's already kicking my ass. i'll try to have a more consistent uploading schedule from now on—probably every two weeks? anyway, thanks for sticking around! and a big thank you to quentin for being my beta.  
> update 10/9: changed laptop scene so katara doesn’t find anything at all. this makes more sense for later on so it’s kinda important.

_When I see you this night, I won't sleep_

_\- She Loves You No Less,_ My Bloody Valentine

* * *

Katara hangs suspended in the moment between wakefulness and sleep. She is drifting, floating in a land of inky blackness, lights dancing behind her eyelids, the world hazy and muffled around her. Katara doesn't want to open her eyes. Not yet. She likes to stay in these moments, sometimes. If she concentrates hard enough, if she reaches out to unwind those lights and pull them toward her, surrounding her, she can almost imagine what once was. She isn't Katara, twenty-two, mother and grandmother dead, brother gone, a chasm hanging between her and her father, regret twisting and poisoning her friendships, heart hanging heavy with everything she said and everything she didn't.

She is Katara, sixteen, and it is the weekend so she and her brother are allowed to sleep in, and she can hear Sokka's rumbling snores in the room next to hers. Always been a deep sleeper, she thinks fondly, and she can hear Gran-Gran shuffling around downstairs, humming an old folk-tune, and despite being old she is strong and healthy and she has no trace of illness in her body, not yet. Katara reaches out, and she hears the cars outside her window, the songbirds chirping, the wind rustling through the trees, children laughing as they play on the street. The sunlight filtering through the window is bright behind her eyelids, and she reaches into the light, twisting, pulling harder.

She is Katara, seven years old, her mother and father waking her up on her birthday, surprising her with a trip to the ocean, a weekend with her and her family and the waves, the golden sand warm beneath her toes, the smell of sea salt in the air, the sound of the otter-gulls carried by the wind. Her brother pushes her into the water, and she dips below the waves, watching the sunlight hit the water above her, surrounded by white sea foam, water churning and bubbling around her, but she is not afraid. The waves carry her to the shore, and she and Sokka keep playing, pushing each other, splashing each other, building animals in the sand. She makes a turtle-seal; he, an eel-hound. Their parents watch from a little ways away, smiling to themselves. Gran-Gran reads a worn, dog-eared book on an old towel beneath an umbrella. Katara and Sokka run across the sand, across the waves forever and ever, sun on their backs, faces to the sea.

Katara hears her name being called from far away, and her vision shatters around her. Opening her eyes, blinking and trying to adjust to the light, she realizes her father is telling her he's off to work. "Bye, dad," Katara rasps. Her mouth is dry, tongue sticking to the back of her throat. She swallows and tries again, but she hears her father's footsteps recede, his shadow disappearing from under her doorframe, and he is gone.

After a light breakfast of a moon-peach and a bowl of congee, Katara decides to dig up any information she can about Sokka's disappearance. She steps outside, locking the front door behind her, and starts walking.

It smells faintly of rain and the trees lining the road are a lush, vibrant green. It had rained all night and most of the morning and the sky is a dull gray, the air heavy. Katara feels it weighing down on her shoulders, and she knows it's not just the air that feels thick and oppressive. She takes a deep breath and sighs. Katara looks around as she walks, taking in the home she hasn't seen in years. It feels different, somehow, and she knows there isn't quite room for her here. Not anymore.

She stops in front of the neighborhood's playground. It's empty, of course. No one wants to play on wet playground equipment. She stares at the swing, mind far away. She and Sokka would play here when they were little. Before their mom died and their father became distant. Their parents would watch them from the bench, Kanna at her weekly Pai Sho club meeting. Katara and Sokka would chase each other around the playground, laughing and shouting, never growing tired, hot summer sun beating down upon them. Sometimes their dad would tie a length of rope to the monkey bars, hanging a ball down at the end, and Sokka would try to play one foot high kick. He'd always fail, of course. He was too small. He'd fall on his butt every time, but get up and try again and again. He'd wanted to be just like his dad. He always had.

Katara looks away, her throat tight. She sees a two-headed lizard-worm wriggling on the pavement, steps over it and keeps on walking.

Looking around once more, Katara can see a world that went on without her. Once-familiar paved roads and buildings made unfamiliar, twisted and poisoned by something deeper than time. Her heart pangs in her chest, and she stares at the ground for the rest of her walk. Muscle memory takes her to the police station.

Katara looks up and sees the rust red-bricked building, fallen into slight disrepair. The faded paint reads "MAKAPU POLICE STATION." In a small town like this, there's not much use for the cops. She sighs and pulls open the heavy wooden door. The last time she was here...

_Katara sat in the uncomfortable wooden chair, across the desk from a police officer. The temperature in the building was way too cold and she resisted the urge to shiver. The officer looked at her with kind eyes and said, "My name is Ming. I'm going to be asking you a few questions about your brother, okay?" Katara nodded, too tired to speak._

_"Katara," she began. "When was the last time you saw your brother?"_

_Katara swallowed. The woods, the woods, the woods—"Last night," she said. "After dinner I was doing homework in my room and he came in and said goodnight and asked me if I needed a ride tomorrow and I said yes. I heard him stay up for a few more hours talking on the phone with his girlfriend and then he went to bed at around eleven. I probably got to sleep at one." Katara's heart beat a loud tattoo in her chest._

_She'd lied._

_Why had she lied?_

_Ming wrote in a notebook and looked at her carefully, but continued. "And he never mentioned wanting to run away or anything like that?"_

_To this, Katara could answer truthfully. "No," she breathed. "No, he never did."_

_Katara tried to calm her stuttering heart._

_Why had she lied?_

Katara walks into the building and is relieved to see a familiar face behind the receptionist's desk, a gray-haired woman who liked to go by Aunt Wu. She walks up with a smile. Aunt Wu looks up from her desk and her face breaks out into a grin. She gets up and walks around to Katara and pulls her into a quick hug, then stands back to look at her. "Oh, Katara, you've gotten so grown!" Katara smiles bashfully. "How has the outside world treated you? How was university? Oh, we've got to catch up sometime."

"Yeah! We should," Katara replies. "And well, actually, I kinda came here for—"

Aunt Wu cuts her off, understanding dawning on her gaze. "You didn't come in here just to see an old lady like me, did you?" Katara feels guilty, but nods all the same. Aunt Wu nods sharply. "All right then. What do you want to know?"

Katara takes a breath. "I want to see the missing person file," she starts, "I want to see everything you have."

Aunt Wu nods and leaves, making her way to a room in the back of the station. Before long, she's back, and she holds out a thin manila folder in front of Katara. "This is all we've got," she says, apologetic. Katara frowns. "Everything?"

"Yes," Aunt Wu replies. Katara sighs and takes the folder. "Thank you," she says. "I'll... I'll see you around." Aunt Wu looks solemn. "Be careful, Katara. People who disappear around these parts, they don't come back." Katara gives her a questioning gaze. "Huh? What do you mean?" But Aunt Wu shakes her head as her desk phone rings and before she takes the call she says, "You'll see," and Katara feels frustration mounting because why is she being so cryptic and why does no one know _anything_ about what happened to her brother, but she pushes it down and finally takes a look at the file in her hands.

Opening it up, she finds Sokka's senior yearbook photo at the front, and she almost chokes up at the image of her brother, frozen in time. He'd always tried to have a joke yearbook photo, making funny faces or dressing up in ridiculous costumes or gotten crazy hairstyles—but for this one, he'd looked uncharacteristically serious. _Did you know?_ Katara asks the photo, knowing how ridiculous the idea is. His face, still round with baby fat, eyes dark and solemn, hair pulled up in a traditional warrior's wolf tail. And Katara wants to cry knowing she didn't get to see her brother grow up.

Behind the photograph, she finds one singular sheet of paper with Sokka's name, date of birth, age, height, weight, hair and eye color, and the date of disappearance and estimated time. Statements from witnesses. And then the investigation: no evidence of foul play or signs of struggle in his room, no suspicious behavior in his friends or family—Katara laughs weakly at that—the shirshu not picking up any scent, no sightings in nearby towns, no suspicious behavior in anyone around town, either, and Katara can see they gave up the search a few months after he disappeared, around the time Gran-Gran died.

And that's it. Nothing more. One sheet of paper. Katara feels her eyes burn and she wants to do—something, she doesn't know what, she wants to scream, she wants to rage and take Aunt Wu's computer and throw it to the ground, she wants to overturn every desk in this wretched police station, she wants to go up to every officer and ask how could they do it, how could they stop looking for her brother, but she doesn't do any of that. She's just as much to blame. Probably more. Katara turns and leaves, feeling hollow, every step heavy. She leaves Aunt Wu on the phone and the report on her desk.

She takes the photo, though, and folds it carefully in her wallet. She doesn't care that it's stealing. Somehow, she knows Aunt Wu won't mind.

Katara stands outside the police station for a moment, wondering about her next steps. She feels frustration simmering within her, the sense of something being out of reach and she knows there's something she's missing, some piece that will make the puzzle come together, a game show riddle and the prize is her brother back. A notebook, the woods, her dreams... Aunt Wu's words reverberate around in her head.

_People who disappear around these parts, they don't come back._

Were there more people like Sokka? If so, why hadn't she heard of them? No one can keep secrets in this town, or so she thought... Katara wonders if there's more to this spirits-forsaken town than meets the eye. She feels that familiar crushing anguish rising in her chest as she looks around. Where to, what now? She'd been hoping the police station would offer more clues, but they were just as useless today as they had been four years ago.

"Where are you, Sokka?" Katara murmurs under her breath. She could call Zuko or Suki, she could catch up with them, tell them she was back in town, but Katara isn't feeling up for human interaction at the moment. She feels brittle, cold and hard as ice, like she could shatter at any moment. Zuko, Suki and Toph had stayed in town. Suki runs a dojo and Zuko had become a welder (Katara has to admit, she hadn't really seen that one coming). Aang is off traveling the world—last she heard, he was somewhere in the ruins of the old Air temples. And Toph... well. Katara definitely isn't ready to see her yet. All Katara knows is she needs to get away, and it suddenly gets hard to breathe because she misses him, she misses her brother so much it's a gaping wound in her chest, reopened after years of being away had dulled it down into a low ache. He should be here. Every milestone of college, of graduation, when she'd gotten that internship, when she'd been the first person to ever get an A on Professor Pakku's criminally hard final exam. He should be _here_ , at her side, reminiscing over shared childhood memories that line the streets of Makapu. The world made sense when her big brother had been with her. The world hasn't made sense in four years.

He hadn't even been around to bury their Gran-Gran.

With sudden clarity, Katara knows where she has to go. She turns and makes her way toward her destination.

After a few minutes of fast-paced walking, almost jogging, Katara finds herself at the edge of town. To the east, the road.

To the west, the forest.

Katara walks toward it, her boots squelching in the mud. The wind hums through the trees and they creak ominously. Around her, Katara hears the sounds of the woods, the insects chirping, the trees rustling, and above her she sees a clouded sky. She keeps going, avoiding tree roots and patches of muddy ground, hiking up hills, until she can no longer hear the cars in the distance, until her legs are burning, until she hears the rush of water. Dusk falls over the forest, the sky cold and purple and blue.

Katara has found the river. She steps closer to the riverbank, looking to the cold, clear, rushing water, the rocks and fish she can see at the bottom of the river, and, weirdly, she can almost _feel_ the power of the running water thrumming under her skin, in her veins, but her head starts hurting and the moment is gone. For some reason, Katara suddenly remembers a Water Tribe tradition Gran-Gran had told her about. When someone died, she said, the tribe would name a newborn after the deceased. This way, the soul of the deceased would live on in the child. It helped alleviate the grief from losing a loved one. Katara and her dad (plus Sokka, the first time) had returned to the South Pole to bury her mom and her Gran-Gran, and a year after their deaths, with the help of the elders, their names were passed on.

But not Sokka. Because Katara _knows_ he's alive. She knows it as deeply as she knows that the moon controls the tides, that the Earth is round, that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. He's alive. She just has to find him.

Katara sits and stares at the water, losing herself in her thoughts.

Before she knows it, night has fallen. The forest has grown dark, the sky a deep blue velvet, starless and unfriendly. She hears the sound of the cicada-crickets around her, the faint rustling of animals in the bushes, the ever-present rush of the river. Had she really been sitting there for that long? She looks around and shivers. The shadows of the trees across the grass reach out with jagged limbs, and Katara sees the glint of shining green eyes through the bushes. Her heart stops. Just a raccoon fox, she tells herself. The raccoon fox darts out of the brush, scampering across the grass, pale in the light of the moon. Katara almost sags to the ground in relief. The dull light of the full moon shines on the river, and Katara feels that pull again, from before, just for a split second—but then it is gone. Somewhere in the distance, she hears the hoot of a cat-owl.

Katara suddenly feels very, very alone. "Sokka?" she calls out, feeling foolish. No response. Of course not. Sokka hasn't been here for a long, long time.

There's just the whisper of the trees, the shadows, the cold, pale moonlight. Katara pulls out her phone and sees a string of missed calls and texts from her father—she types out a quick response that she'll be home soon—and turns on her phone flashlight, beginning the trek back home. Katara tries and fails to ignore the sounds of the forest around her, jumping at every crack of twigs or rustle of leaves, and when she reaches the road she gets another message: _Went to bed. Your suitcases are upstairs. There's leftovers in the fridge. Love you_. Her watch tells her it's half past eleven. Katara pockets her phone and starts jogging on the stretch of road back to Makapu. She doesn't even relax when she's back because the flickering yellow streetlights are _watching_ her with bright, cruel eyes and they _know_ that she left her brother behind and she tries to calm her heart rate when she finally reaches her house. But Aunt Wu's words buzz in her mind, pushing against her temple, and Katara can't shake her restlessness.

_People who disappear around these parts, they don't come back._

What had she meant?

Katara unlocks the front door and carefully eases it open, finding all the lights turned off. She shuts it as quietly as she can and makes her way up the staircase and to her room. She'll skip dinner. She's not that hungry, anyway.

Katara collapses onto her bed with a sigh and slides her laptop out of her backpack, powering it on. She clicks to the web browser and types in "missing people Makapu," her hands trembling. She waits with bated breath as the webpage loads and then—nothing. No results come up. Katara blinks, confused. She thought there'd at least be some articles about Sokka—but no. There aren't any.

Frowning, Katara tries "disappearances Makapu" and "missing Makapu" and "Makapu missing person reports" but the results are the same.

There is nothing.

Katara furrows her brow, thinking.

_People who disappear around these parts, they don't come back._

So. Sokka wasn't the first to disappear from this town without leaving a trace.

In a small town like Makapu, that seemed like it would be pretty big news, right? It had sure seemed like it when Sokka had disappeared, the police department doing everything they could to find him...

She shoots off a few more search terms, refreshing the browser almost obsessively, but still nothing comes up.

And maybe she can blame the lack of results on living in a town with a technologically illiterate news station, but she knows that's not true. 

Tui and La, what had her brother gotten himself _into_?

She doesn't know what's going on, but she knows it can't be anything good, and Katara tries to convince herself that Aunt Wu is wrong because Sokka _will_ come back but despite this she feels dread pooling in her stomach and crawling up her throat. She needs to go back and talk to Aunt Wu. She needs to tell Zuko and Suki what's going on. She needs to tell her dad the real reason she came back. She needs to... she needs to...

Katara suddenly notices how tired she is, how her eyes can barely keep themselves open, how a headache is steadily throbbing behind her temple, and Katara glances at the clock and is surprised to find that it's past three. She glances back at her screen and the words on the page seem to mock her, holding answers far away from her reach, like how her brother used to stand on his tip toes and hold the last of the sea prunes high above his head, and Katara would grumble and whine and try to knock him over until at last he conceded. He could never say no to his little sister.

Except for when he had, when Katara had told him not to go into the woods. The one time it had mattered.

Katara snaps her laptop shut and pads across the room, joints aching, to turn off her lights. She crawls under her sheets without bothering to brush her teeth or change and stares up at the ceiling, at the faint glint of the glow-in-the-dark stars. Her mind churns, and Katara wonders about Aunt Wu, wonders about the other missing people, wonders why there are no articles about them, wonders what this town is hiding, wonders where her brother is and why he'd left and what he'd found in the woods and what secrets he'd kept in his notebook, the thoughts repeating over and over in her head like a prayer until at last exhaustion overtakes her and she falls into the cool embrace of sleep.

—

This time, Katara is in a dense wood, fog settling over the ground like a blanket, air crisp and cool. Katara stumbles forward, almost tripping over the gnarled tree roots jutting out of the ground, and sees that the trees are huge, bigger than any tree she's ever seen in her life, trunks several meters wide. Katara looks around, wondering why she hasn't heard Sokka yet, and keeps walking. "Sokka?" she calls. "Sokka, are you there?" Katara feels the hairs stand on the back of her neck, gets the feeling there's someone behind her but she whips around and there is no one. She gulps and tries to keep going, but missteps and falls to the ground, her foot catching on a jagged rock. Her ankle twists painfully and Katara grimaces, but she pulls herself up and limps onward. The fog swirls around her, and if she looks closely she swears she can see faces, mouths contorted in screams... Katara shakes the thought away. "Sokka?" she tries again. "Hello! Anyone?"

Soon she finds herself in a clearing, the earth hard and cold under her feet. Up ahead she can barely make out a vaguely bird-like shape. Katara inches her way forward.

As she gets closer, she sees that she was right, and in front of her is a huge, malnourished bird, almost as tall as her, most of its feathers missing or matted, its eyes pale and sickly, its skin stretched tight across its bones.

Katara feels silly trying to talk to a bird, but she tries anyway. "Um... Hello?" she asks. "I'm looking for my brother... can you help me?"

The bird only stares. Katara gets the strange sense that it can understand her, that it's waiting for something, but she doesn't know what that is. She doesn't know anything. As always, her dreams only bring her frustration.

Katara swallows thickly. "Do you... do you need something?"

Again, nothing. The bird stares with its sightless eyes, and Katara fidgets and thinks about Aang and how he'd been able to identify every and any bird he came across, even by their call. Would he know what kind of bird this was, though? A bird that existed in her dreams...

Several long moments pass and Katara is acutely aware of the chill seeping in through her bones, of the dull ache in her ankle, of the fog obscuring her surroundings and she's about to give up and start wandering again by herself to look for Sokka when the bird opens its beak and _screams._

Katara stumbles back and automatically claps her hands over her ears, trying vainly to muffle the horrific, almost _human_ -like screeching of the bird, but it's like the sound is not just around her but within her because, if anything, it gets louder, a cacophony of thousands of voices screaming in her mind, and Katara turns and sprints blindly out of the clearing, engulfed by the fog. She ignores the sharp pain in her ankle; she stumbles and trips too many times to count, each time gaining a new scratch or bruise on her limbs and she ignores that too. Her only thought is to get away _away_ from the screams, and vaguely she is aware of the bird following closely behind her, fast and powerful despite its weak, sickly appearance, and Katara doesn't let herself wonder how long she can keep this up. She runs and runs and runs, and she's so focused on not tripping over the whorled tree roots that pop up in her path that she misses the thick tree trunk in front of her that emerges from the fog and smacks into it, head first. Dazed, Katara falls backward, and she sees the terrible, screaming bird towering over her but her eyelids flutter shut and then there is nothing.

—

When she opens her eyes again she's lying on her bedroom floor, back aching, moonlight filtering in through her blinds. She must've fallen out of bed while she slept.

Katara tries to stand up but a sharp pain lances through her ankle and she feels horror bolt through her. She's almost afraid to look down but she does, and sees her ankle is red and swollen, her legs covered in a myriad of bruises and criss-crossed with scratches, and she lifts her hands, registers the scratches on them, too, and touches her forehead where there is a large, painful bump.

Katara's head spins at the implications.

Her injuries from her dream followed her into the waking world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one foot high kick demonstration [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAehvp7SdcA&ab_channel=CITCAlaska)


End file.
